


untitled four

by thedarknesswithin (babylxxrry)



Series: untitled [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 10:06:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babylxxrry/pseuds/thedarknesswithin
Summary: (sorry)i wish this wasn't what broke my writer's block. i wish i didn't have to fight this. i wish i didn't have to deal with this. but i'd never wish i'd never met him.





	untitled four

**Author's Note:**

> (sorry)
> 
> i wish this wasn't what broke my writer's block. i wish i didn't have to fight this. i wish i didn't have to deal with this. but i'd never wish i'd never met him.

She doesn’t know why she’s jealous, but it’s not even really jealousy. She doesn’t know why she feels a pang of something, something harsher and sharper and rawer than jealousy.

No, jealousy is subtle, a sleek little cat creeping into the periphery of her vision, curling around her heart, claws always ready to prick and prod. And maybe jealousy, when it makes its appearance, is more aggressive and possessive than _this,_ but whatever _this_ is, it’s a throbbing, stinging ache that refuses to let her go. It’s a panther to jealousy’s cat.

She thinks maybe it’s betrayal. The sense that some pact, some treaty, some unspoken agreement was torn in half and thrown in her face.

Then again, it’s not like she has any hold over him. It’s not like they ever _talked_ about it. God, no. Whatever _this_ is, whatever it is that they have, that they’re dancing around, _this_ remains unspoken.

But at the same time, she thought he’d read between the lines the way she did. She thought he’d seen the same things, thought the same things, agreed to the same terms she did when they’d formed this… whatever it is.

Friendship, partnership, something else, she doesn’t know. It doesn’t have a name. It’s just _it._ The elephant in the room no one comments on outside of hushed whispers at the fringes of their circle. They dance around each other and they skillfully sidestep openings to talk about what _this_ is, because whatever it is, it’s too precious to lose. It’s too fragile and precious and important to them.

At least, that’s what she’d thought. That’s what she’d seen it as.

Apparently, he didn’t get the same memo she did.

He dances the dance, plays the part, says all the right things and does all the right things and then turns around and does it all with someone else. Someone who doesn’t exist in this sphere of not-this-not-that-but-something that she’s stuck in. And it’s not like that someone is a bad someone. She can’t say anything about _her_ , because she doesn’t know _her_ , doesn’t know what _she’s_ like or anything, but at the same time, she still feels betrayed.

She feels betrayed by him, even though there wasn’t anything to betray in the first place. They’re not a thing. They’re not… anything. They’re friends. Partners in crime, sometimes. And sometimes she catches him watching her like there’s something more, like there could be something more if they were only brave enough to jump together, if they were only brave enough to take that step forward and make something of it, but they aren’t. They’ll never be. Not anytime soon, anyways. And that’s why it hurts, she thinks. Because _soon_ could mean so many things. Could mean so many people. People who come between them, people who he loves, people who she loves. Sometimes she thinks she’s being stupid, that nothing was, or will ever happen between them, but some little part of her clings onto the naïve hope that whispers _someday, someday, someday._

Really, there’s nothing to betray, and at the same time it _hurts_ when he posts silly pictures with _her,_ not an hour after she leaves. It _hurts_ when he talks about her with stars in his eyes, because, right, this unspoken thing isn’t a thing. Somehow, it hurts more when he seems to pick up on the fact that she’s not responding according to the script, when she laughs too quietly and smiles too small and nods a beat too late. When he stops talking and his eyes lose the stars and soften with a look he’s only ever had for her, he’s only ever given to her. When he says _I’m sorry_ without ever saying it, when all he needs to do is lock eyes with her for eleven seconds to say everything.

Those moments, she thinks he understands, thinks he sees the same thing she does, thinks he realizes what she’s been thinking the whole time.

And then he looks away and presses his lips together and changes the topic to the new music he found the other day, and would she like to listen?

And she’ll listen and comment and laugh and talk and dance the dance and play the part because that’s all she _can_ do. That’s all she can do for now, all she can do to keep him playing his part until the scene they’ve so carefully built comes crashing down around them with the touch of an errant word. A misspoken feeling. A misread moment where she thinks maybe, just maybe it’s time to jump but he doesn’t. It’ll happen. Someday. And she likes to think maybe she’ll be able to rebuild something for herself out of the rubble, maybe she’ll be able to play her own parts and write her own script, but she knows she’ll always write him next to her.

So she keeps smiling, keeps suggesting things to do together, keeps watching him do and say and be all the right things when she’s around, keeps biting back tears when he exchanges their not-thing for his own _thing._

And all she wants is for him to happy, so she’ll let him go. She’ll let him go in time, when he no longer wants to play his part and say his lines. Maybe when she’s tired of the betrayal that doesn’t even have a root, when she wants to be done, but she knows that’s not going to happen.

It’s his line next.

 

//


End file.
